Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

mthew

  • Tuliptree

    Last year’s fruit, found like this, split right in half, with one of this year’s in the background. The leaves were glistening in the hot sun, sticky with honeydew. Aphids were at work. Assuming these are Tuliptree Aphids (Illinoia liriodendri). Some kind of leaf-spotting fungus And turn a leaf over. Hugging the center: a tree…

    mthew

  • Another Very Special Edition of Raptor Wednesday

    I was worried. It’s late June. Shouldn’t I have seen these fledglings sooner? In truth, they don’t look like they came out of the nest yesterday. I suspect they’ve been out and around for a few days now. She scrunches down before lift-off. There was actually a young male up there, too. I’d heard somebody…

    mthew

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  • A Very Special Edition of Raptor Wednesday

    Yup, it’s Thursday, but yesterday morning an American Kestrel caught my eye because it crossed the bow of the apartment windows and landed in a tree. It was where it landed that was out of the ordinary. Usually, the #BrooklynKestrels pair land up near the top of the tallest London Plane tree bordering the park.…

    mthew

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    Two young Red-tailed hawks of the class of 2020 were screaming their heads off the other day in Green-Wood. Because they were so close to the big pine nest, I presume that’s where they came from. Opposite corners here. As far as I understand it, the young raptors were demanding meat. One of the parent…

    mthew

  • A Very Small Jelly Donut?

    Spotted this small object on a swamp white oak leaf yesterday. With help from iNaturalist and Tracks and Signs of Insects, I learned that it’s an egg of a Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus). You may recall that I found a half dozen of the large cocoons of this species over the winter. I’ve seen several…

    mthew

  • Mammal Monday

    Hanging from a tree by the back legs.

    mthew

  • Chipping

    Sure have been a lot of bugs around here on the blog this week… So here’s a Chipping Sparrow family. Parent with the red poll above. Two views of one of the fledglings. Was chipping away like mad, always a good sign this time of year that hungry birds are about demanding to be fed.…

    mthew

  • Discovery Week V

    I could barely see, and barely photograph, this one on the side of a tree. I first thought it was some kind of moth. The very long antennae forms, mostly in shade, are rather un-mothlike, though. Turns out this is a giant casemaker caddisfly, possibly in the species Banksiola. The aquatic larvae stage given them…

    mthew

  • Discovery Week IV

    An Eumeninae, one of the potter and mason wasps. Taking a break to clean itself, including its antennae. There are some very similar-looking wasps in this subfamily. This one has been identified on iNaturalist as Parancistrocerus leionotus, a species with no common name. Genus Stenodynerus has some near-look-alikes. There are 110 species world-wide in the…

    mthew

  • Discovery Week III

    The Elegant Grass-veneer moth (Microcrambus elegans).Common and widespread. The larvae feed on grasses. The adults flit about in the grass, stirred up by your footfall. This one leapt up onto a leaf to focus my attention. Here’s what I think is a Double-banded Grass-Veneer (Crambus agitatellus), another grass-lover and photo-challenge. The fuzzy, brush-like fronts of…

    mthew